On This Day in HISTORY

1002 – English king Æthelred II (the ‘Unready’), told of rumors that the Danes were plotting to assassinate him, orders the killing of all Danes in England, known now as the St. Brice’s Day massacre

1637 – David Kirke is appointed as the first Proprietary Governor of Newfoundland, the island on the eastern coast of Canada, and granted a Royal Charter. He arrived in 1638 with 100 colonists, and began collecting tolls from the many vessels which came to fish the Grand Banks

1715 – Dorothea Erxleben born, first woman medical doctor in Germany, instructed from an early age by her father, she was inspired when Italian scientist Laura Bassi became a university professor to fight for her right to practice medicine. In 1742, she published a tract arguing that women should be allowed to attend university. She became the first German woman to receive a PhD in 1754. After being admitted to study by a dispensation of Frederick the Great, Erxleben received her M.D. from the University of Halle. She went on to analyze the obstacles preventing women from studying, among them housekeeping and children

1732 – John Dickinson, American lawyer and politician, was a member of both the first and second Continental Congresses, and wrote the first draft of the 1776-1777 Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, 5th Governor of Pennsylvania (1782-85)

1760 – Jiaqing Emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty born

1789 – Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to a friend, writes: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

1792 – Edward Trelawny born, English author and adventurer; friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron; Adventures of a Younger Son is a memoir of his youth

1805 – Frankfurter Day * – Johann George Lehner, a Viennese butcher, invents a sausage, naming it the “frankfurter”

1833 – Edwin Booth born, American Shakespearean actor, noted for his performances of Hamlet; his career is blighted by his brother’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Edwin Booth as Hamlet, circa 1879

1841 – James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism

1862 – Mary Kingsley born, English ethnographer, scientific writer and explorer who had training as a nurse; her travels in West Africa, beginning with a four month journey in 1893 from Sierra Leone to Angola, and followed by an 1894-1895 trip which began in Nigeria, where she met the missionary Mary Slessor, then canoeing up the Ogooué River in Gabon, and climbing Mount Cameroon, before returning to England for an extensive lecture tour. Her lectures and the publication of her books, Travels in West Africa, and West African Studies, did much to shape the popular perception in Britain of Africans

1869 – Helene Stöcker born in Germany, head of the Bund für Mutterschutz (League forThe Protection of Mothers), a pioneering reproductive rights organization that advocates equality under the law for illegitimate children, homes for unwed mothers, sex education, access to contraceptives, legalization of abortion, and the right to divorce. In 1908 it was renamed Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform (adding ‘Sexual Reform’); founder in 1923 of War Resisters International; founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

1869 – Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams born in Russia, liberal politician, writer and feminist; was a leading campaigner for the All-Russian Union for Women’s Equality; left Russia in 1920, disillusioned with communism and socialism, and lived in the UK and the U.S., founding the Russian Liberation Committee, and raising money for Russian orphans

1886 – Mary Wigman born Marie Wiegmann, German choreographer and dancer, a pioneer of modern dance and dance therapy

1887 – ‘Bloody Sunday’ in London during a march protesting unemployment, the British Coercion Acts in Ireland, and demanding the release of William O’Brien, MP for Mallow, who was under arrest for drafting the ‘No Rent Manifesto’ urging poor Irish tenant farmers to withhold rent to force the end of landlordism, especially aimed at English and Protestant landlords. Violent clashes took place between the police and demonstrators, many “armed with iron bars, knives, pokers and gas pipes” – 400 protesters were reported arrested and 75 persons badly injured, including many police, two policemen being stabbed and one protester bayoneted

Bloody Sunday – Trafalgar Square – 1887

1906 – Eva Zeisel born in Hungary, American industrial ceramics designer whose worker is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and many other museums around the world

1925 – Diamonds discovered south of Port Nolloth on the Namaqua coast of South Africa

1927 – The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic, the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City

1933 – The first sit-down labor strike in America takes place in Austin, MN

1937 –NBC starts the first full-sized symphony orchestra exclusively for radio broadcasting, conducted for its first 17 years by Arturo Toscanini

1942 –FDR signs a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18

1955 – Whoopi Goldberg born Caryn Johnson, American comedian, actress, author and television host; one of the few entertainers to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, a Tony and and Oscar; advocate for human rights and LGBT rights, and against the use of children in armed conflicts

1959 – Caroline Goodall born, English screenwriter and actress; has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre; noted for her screenplays for The Bay of Silence and Dreams of Leaving

1961 – Kim Polese born, American technology executive; Chair of CrowdSmart Inc, a technology-based seed stage investment company, and Chair of ClearStreet Inc, which develops products and tools to help reduce employer and employee spending on healthcare; co-founder and CEO of Marimba with the creators of the Java programming language; recipient of the 2010 Innovator Award from the National Center for Women & Information Technology

1961 – The Tokens release “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”

1966 – Susanna Haapoja born, Finnish politician, who served two terms as a Centre Party MP (2003-2009) before her death from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 42

1967 – Bonnie Ntshalintshali born, South African Artist, noted for ceramic works and paintings; she had polio as a child, so her mother encouraged her to develop her artistic skills to earn a living; won the Corobrik National Ceramic Award in 1988; died from an AIDS-related illness in 1999

1968 – The Beatles’ animated movie Yellow Submarine U.S. premiere

1969 – Over 45,000 Anti-Vietnam War protesters in Washington, D.C. stage a symbolic ‘March Against Death’

1974 – Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant near Crescent, Okla., is killed in a suspicious car crash

1977 – Bishop Desmond Tutu resigned as Bishop of Lesotho Anglican Church, after being appointed as the first Black Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), which was taking an increasingly radical position against apartheid

1981 – Rivkah born as Rivkah Greulich, American cartoonist and graphic novelist; noted for her teen series Steady Beat

1982 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans

1985 –Xavier Suárez is sworn in as Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor

1986 – The Compact of Free Association becomes law, granting the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands independence from the United States

1992 – The High Court of Australia rules in Dietrich v The Queen that although there is no absolute right to have publicly funded counsel, in most circumstances a judge should grant any request for an adjournment or stay when an accused is unrepresented

1994 – Swedish voters pass a referendum to join the European Union

1997 – The Lion King musical opens on Broadway

1998 – First World Kindness Day * started by the World Kindness Movement

2000 – Elton John releases his live album One Night Only

2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals to try any foreigners captured with connections to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. It was the first time since World War II that a president had taken such action.

2002 – Saddam Hussein’s government agrees to the return of international weapons inspectors to Iraq

2003 –A judicial ethics panel throws Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore off the bench for refusing to comply with an injunction to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse

2009 – NASA announces that water had been discovered on the moon by the planned impact on the moon of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)

2014 – Over a three year period, five New Orleans police detectives charged with investigating sex crimes dismissed 840 out of 1,290 sex crime calls as “miscellaneous” and did no follow-up, according to a city inspector general report; in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced Wednesday that he would dedicate $35 million for helping U.S. prosecutors clear a backlog by testing tens of thousands of rape kits

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About wordcloud9

Nona Blyth Cloud has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for the past 45 years, spending much of that time commuting on the 405 Freeway. After Hollywood failed to appreciate her genius for acting and directing, she began a second career managing non-profits, from which she has retired.
Nona has now resumed writing whatever comes into her head, instead of reports and pleas for funding. She lives in a small house overrun by books with her wonderful husband and a bewildered Border Collie.